Good boys don't lie
by fontainepen
Summary: Matthew goes missing on the night of the Fourth of July. When he was found again, no one questioned him about what happened. Now it's a couple years after the event and something's gone horridly wrong with him. Alfred never notices, but he comes into realization as chain of events cross into their paths- and they're much too related to him to be an ordinary crime.
1. Chapter 1

**This is my first time writing a long story with multiple chapters.. I'm sorry if it starts out boring and flat in the beginning. I swear that I'll start putting in more of the actions towards the middle of the story though!**

**It turns into Alfred's pov starting from the second part of the story, sorry for the confusion )):**

* * *

_A little bird once told your brother, he did, that he was a monster._

..

..

..

.

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If you combined the sound of about hundred kids cheering all at once, the mumbles of complaining adults, a couple little toddlers running around in excitement, and the smell of hot popcorn and the chewing noises what did you get?

You got the Terry town's Fourth of July parade.

Children ran around wildly, kicking up tufts of grass into the air with their sneakers. And of course, amongst the pack of that wild hullabaloo, there was Alfred too. He was waving the flag of his country proudly, earning a few chuckles from the standing adults. Just a couple steps back, Matthew toddled along his brother's footsteps, his violet-purple eyes full of worry and weariness.

"Al, wait for me-"

Alfred didn't hear, he was busy leading his own pack down the park. _Two more minutes 'till the firework!_

"Alfred please-"

Someone had snatched the flag out of his hands, Alfred turned around, yelling out an angry 'Hey!' at the thief.

The first firework hit the air with its thundering sound crackling across the sky. Everyone paused in their footsteps and let out their involuntarily 'OOos' and 'Ahhhhs'. A couple of the littluns continued to wave their hands in the air and let out their cheering noises into the air. This was no exception for Alfred, he stooped over the ground and raised his head towards the sky with his eyes rounded. A happy face dotted across the sky and the littluns began to giggle out simultaneously.

* * *

"Alfred honey, where's Matthew?"

The air was thin with gray-white mists and the smell of smoke and sweat. The excitement had died down, everyone was sauntering back home. Dads carried their half-asleep kids on their backs, some grinned as they listened to their children go on about the fireworks in loud voices.

Alfred's mouth opened to say something but no words came out. Wasn't he just following behind him two minutes ago?

"He was right behind me."

That of course was an automatic way of saying 'I don't know where he is."

His mom pulled her hair back from her forehead and let out a strained noise. She whispered something to their father and a frown formed on both of their faces. An hour of searching and calling out for his name did no use. The park was empty; the only occupants on the land were the shredded garbage and left over popcorn bags from the parade. Alfred's mouth was going dry by now, it was his fault. Mattie had called out to him before, but he hadn't been paying attention to him. He should've known, he should've known that his brother was calling out for him, what if someone had taken him? A stranger, the kind of strangers with bad intentions like locking Matthew up and never letting him back to his family ever again.

"Mattie!" He called out, his head going wild with his own imaginations. "Matthew!"

"It's no use, it's already over eleven and we've been looking for over an hour now. We need to contact the police and tell him that your brother's gone missing." His dad was saying in a soothing voice while his mom was covering her mouth with both hands, something like a wailing sound was coming out from her and her shoulders were shuddering.

"It's my fault, I wasn't paying attention to our son, I thought he was with the other boys and I thought he'd be with Alfred-"

"We'll find him… he couldn't have gone too far from here."

A stranger took Mattie, maybe another adult had mistaken Matthew to be their own, maybe he fell into a hole, maybe-

"Alfred."

Heads turned around to the direction of the feeble voice.

Matthew stood there with his dirtied jeans and his mudcaked sneakers and t-shirt, his fists balled up tightly.

"Alfred." He repeated again.

Everyone assumed that he got lost while running around with the other kids during the parade. After all, there were always the kids who ended up straying away from their parents out of excitement. But Matthew? It was unlikely for him to get lost, but they just assumed that he got lost out of his excitement. He received a scolding from his mother when they got home. He was told to go wash up and go straight up to his room for the night.

"Think in a positive way Carol, he just earned himself an adventure."

"He never gets lost though, he always sticks right next to us, it's so unlikely of him-"

"He's old enough to go out venturing by himself now, he's curious."

No one asked him what really happened.

* * *

"Yo Mattie, about that book report-"

Matthew scrambled up to his feet from the bed and slammed shut his books. "Christ-Alfred, I've told you to knock!"

"Don't yell at me, you're the one being anti-social and setting up your own rules! "

Matthew shot a sour expression towards me and I gave him one right back. After a couple minutes of intense staring, Matthew broke the ice first, giving me an apology. "Fine, forget about it then…so what about book reports?"

Matthew had been a normal kid once. He had cracked jokes, gone out on dates, boasted about himself and got into plenty enough fights. Now he just seemed to be falling apart on the threads. He didn't like to speak as much, he didn't answer much of his friends' calls, he acted awkward around girls. As for me, I was working on the sporty sides unlike Matthew. I scored, threw, kicked, and slammed into other kids on the field. It was obvious to everyone who was more muscular between us two. No one said anything about it though, because Mattie had always been the quieter one with the brains and I, for instance, was the big and brainless one.

I crawled onto his bed, Matthew drew back. "Romeo and Juliet, bro. Romeo and Juliet." He looked at me, confused for a second, his eyebrows knitting together. "I mean that I need to write a summary for it."

"I thought you were just reading the book a couple days ago, Al."

"I was."

"And?"

"I left it at Arthur's house from last weekend."

He was moaning under his breath and gave off a dirty look. "Look, I'm sorry that I did, okay? I was really going to work on it by myself this time and well….I just got caught up with his new game set." Matthew swatted me off, he already knew what I was about to say. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently and handed over a piece of paper and picked off the pen sitting on the corner of his desk. "Then listen up, I heard that it was due next Monday."

I stretched my legs across his bed and pushed the paper up against the wall with my pen ready. "Alright, professor. M." I said with a fake formality.

"The Capulets and the Mongtagues, they were both in a feud, they hated each other. Romeo was the son of the Montagues and Juliet, the daughter of the Capulets, they fall in love with each other at some point and…"

"Hold on, how do you spell feud?" I asked, scratching out the misspelled word on my notebook. Matthew was silent for a moment and I could imagine him breaking into a snicker. "Are you serious?" I nodded my head and broke into a stupid grin, just to make him laugh a little more. And it worked. Matthew shook his head and sighed, his grin spreading open wider. " F-E-"

I jotted the letters down, looking down at my paper as I scribbled them on. "Hey you know, his brother was asking you about too. I heard you got invited to a party and you turned it down? Dude, you're being anti-social, you should've gone, he told me it was pretty rad…" Matthew had stopped speaking and I poked my head up to look at him. "F and E?"

"I don't think you shouldn't be caring too much about what I do." He murmured stilly.

"I'm just worrying about you."

He gave me a sneer. "And since when did_ you _care about me so much, Alfred?"

"I always was looking out for you!"

"Not."

"Oh yeah? Then who was the one to beat that bully up in third grade, who was the one to push you out when you almost fell into the mud puddle, who was the one to cover you up when you broke mom's favorite vase, who was the on-"

"Then where were you on the night I got lost?" Matthew said solemnly, his eyes growing rounder and his lips stretching into a winning grin. "You were too busy kicking dust up with the other kids to look out for me."

"That doesn't count, we found you anyways and it was you who wondered off from us, Mattie." I said and he shook his head no. "No, you were too busy waving your flag around and shoving popcorn into your faces, you weren't even paying attention even when I was calling out for your name over and over."

He was up close to my face, his voice rising up over his normal tone. I could sense how heavy he was breathing. Then I could also notice how much Matthew had grown up. His soft baby round face had lost its chubbiness and sharp shadows protruded under his jaws and on his cheekbones with light gray circles hanging low under his violet-purple eyes.

The door slammed open and mom peered at us with a wary look. "Boys, are you two fighting?" Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail and by the pleasant smell wafting into the room, she must have been cooking for dinner from downstairs. We both drew back from each other's faces and Matthew shook his head. "No, Alfred was being an idiot and he was asking me how to spell feud."

Mom looked at me with a look that said that she couldn't believe me. "Sweetie, you really need to get caught up with your Language Art classes, I'm tired of e-mailing your teacher excuses!" She placed her hands on her hips, the way she did when she was faking about how frustrated she was. "Anyways, dinner's ready so go and wash up you two."

Matthew broke off from me first and disappeared down the hallway. I gave mom a shrug and she gave me the 'what did you do' look.

By the time I was done with soaping my hands away, they were both downstairs, mom was setting the silverware down on the table. She had made some sort of a salad tossed with tomatoes and greens, along with potatoes and baked chicken.

"Dad's not going to be home tonight, he says he's spilled coffee on his papers or I don't know if it's just one of his excuses." She washed her hands on the rag with a sigh and earned a faint grin from Matthew's lips.

We spooned our food onto our plates in complete silence. Matthew's plate was mainly decorated with lettuce and tomatoes with the tiniest bits of chicken mixed into them.

"I really don't think a plate full of lettuce leaves are an acceptable meal dear." Mom said, rolling her knuckles onto her mug cup thoughtfully. In a moment, Matthew was making whimpering noise as a heaping serving of chicken and potatoes got piled onto his plate.

"He doesn't eat that stuff, tell her that you don't want them Mattie."

"Alfred, I think this has nothing to do with you." Mom sounded wearily as she watched Matthew through the corners of her eyes.

It was an obvious thing that Matthew didn't want any of the stuff on his plate, but he made no remark about it. Moreover, he wasn't listening to either of us as he drew a smiley face onto his mashed potatoes. He poked two holes on the top right corners of the mushy thing and drew a curved line downwards from them. It somehow became a sad face.

_"_See, he doesn't want that stuff." I received a glare from both. "Just saying." A forkful of food went in my mouth and the table went on with its awkward silence and the droning noises and chewing noises.

"Matthew." Mom piped up suddenly. "Isn't there a party this Saturday?"

He froze and mid-paused into between sawing through his food with the knife.

"I heard all of your friends are going there, aren't you still friends with Joseph?"

"No." Matthew stared down at his food.

I made a little 'O' shape with my mouth and cleared my throat.

"If it's about friends, you can ask Alfred to go with you, I'm sure he'd love to-"

"No." He repeated again, his fists pulled tight and his knuckles growing white. "I'm not going with Alfred either."

Mom's face seemed to fall for a moment at his response. "Oh sweetie, you _need_ to do something at least, you haven't left the house for months!" She was trying hard, she was trying desperately to do something about Mattie and we both knew about it. "You're acting so isolated from others, you're being so...unsocial."

I ducked my head so I didn't have to see Matthew's expression. There was a soft clang and after awhile, footsteps thumped up the stairs and the door closed to a bedroom.

It was just my mom and me now. She made a regretful look towards the way Matthew had gone off to, her eyes stealing glances in between me and the hallway. "Did I say something wrong?" Her eyes were dull and lost.

"The food's really good." I pointed out instead and she nodded.

It was a better idea not to bother Matthew any more, so the book report went away unmentioned for the rest of the afternoon, it was also a better thing to ignore the fat tears rolling off from mom's cheeks as she did the dishes- so that also went away unmentioned for the day.

No one never mentioned about Matthew and his social life anymore after that day and he seemed pretty pleased by the way we treated him.

It was also the last time he mentioned to me about the night he got lost.


	2. Chapter 2

**Gosh, I'm glad that some of you found the story to your liking from last time ;;;; sorry, I apologize if it was a little sloppy and cut off, I was writing it half-asleep ( for some reason, I was determined that I needed to post it by the end of the day?) but haha, here's chapter two and hopefully it's a little bit better! :)) thank you and if you could leave me a review, that would be great!**

* * *

Matthew is convinced that his heart will explode in his chest.

His heart will explode and he'll fall down, and he'll die right on the spot. This must be the true meaning of being alone, he's been trampled beneath a stampede of children, and he should have never bothered trying calling out for his brother in the first place.

"Alfred, stop-"

Alfred doesn't stop, he runs away faster. He's running away further away from him the more Matthew calls out towards him. Does he hate him? Matthew needs to catch up with them all, he needs to explain to them that there's something watching them, in between the flurries of fireworks and family members, something else is there- something else is there and it's _watching_ them.

They're all screaming and hollering, he wants to make them understand that they shouldn't be hollering about the damned fireworks right now. They should be screaming about something else far more important.

_"A firework!" A girl shrieks out and tumbles out from the crowd._

Finally the stampede thins out enough for him to turn his head around. He can taste blood on his lips and surely there must be a hole somewhere on his jean. He's trying to assess the situation, but this is a little too much for young Matthew to comprehend. But he's starting to realize that if he doesn't leave right now, he'll be damned for the rest of his life. This much, he could understand this much with his little head.

So a bewildered Matthew runs.

* * *

I sat on the bed, trying in vain to make a connection between Romeo's relationship with Juliet. Why did they end up killing themselves in the end? They could've secretly snuck out and away in the night times; they could've had their happy endings in the end. But apparently, Mr. Shakespeare was a big fan of tragedy stories and he just had to have his own way of ending the story. Imagining it though, it was pretty heartrending to think about it. To think that you fell in love with someone you weren't supposed to- then finding them dead after you finally got your chance to see them again? ….what would he have done in the place of Romeo?

Finally, I gave up and crumpled up the piece of paper and made an aim for the trash can. The paper bounced back off from the bin and rolled off towards the door. Matthew had been avoiding me on purpose these days; he was still pretty pissed off about everything. Now was still not the time to barge into his room and ask for help, unless I wanted to leave with a purplish-blue cheek or something like that. Fumbling for the phone out of my pocket, I held it to one side and thought about calling Arthur. Was he too busy to hang out today?

A series of quick footsteps found its way up to his door and the paper crunched beneath someone's foot.

"Alfred?" Mom was calling.

"You could have knocked." I said in a fake wearily tone.

"Your door was wide open."

"Yeah, you can come in." I raised my head a little bit more to see her standing just outside of his door, her lips pursed together with a heavy-looking brief case in one hand. "Honey," She started, "I really need this promotion and you know how hard I tried…and my boss promised me for one if I could just take care of a little more work and show the place around for a newcomer-"

"Yeah, I get it. You're leaving."

It was a regular thing for her to leave for a couple days from the house. She spent nights over at her office, her eyes squinted down towards the computer as she typed at whatever the grown-ups needed.

She was smiling now, she looked excited. "Could you take care of your brother?"

"…Sure."

Being alone with Matthew, Matthew who was pissed off at him and was avoiding him…that was something. Mom looked somewhat apologetic as she hung her jacket over her left shoulder before smiling again. "I should be back again by Tuesday, I promise." She sauntered over to my way and leaned over my head- the exact gesture for something she always did. I ducked away from her kiss just in time and nodded my head. "Yeah." She grinned at me, patted me on the shoulder twice instead, then disappeared through the doorway. I laid still on my bed, listening to her footsteps thump down the staircase while my eyes traveled over the posters stuck messily on my ceiling.

_The Origin of Captain America! _ The buffed up guy dressed in his patriotic suit was in his running pose, he was breaking out through a newspaper with an angry expression. Dad had bought it for me when I was seven, it was something to boast about to my classmates on the next day. The sound of car starting could be heard, and mom's blue Volkswagen appeared through my window as it pulled out of the driveway and left with a thin smoke of smog.

I stomped down the stairs, squinting at the light that poured into the windows of the house. It was still morning, I doubted that Matthew was even awake right now. He'd always been a heavy sleeper, he rarely ever woke up earlier than 12 in the afternoon. The kitchen was swept clean, mom must have cleaned up the house before she left. My hands reached for the fridge and I peered into the rows of frozen food to see if there was anything good.

I ended up with a plastic container of chocolate pudding and a spoon. As expected, there was no sign of Matthew yet...so I neared the kitchen counter and silently peeled the wrapper of my pudding container.

"Mom left?"

I whipped my head around.

"Matthew.."

"Alfred."

His hands were black and greasy for some reason. It was hard to see what it was because he probably knew that I would interrogate him about his hands. He was trying to stick them into the pockets of jeans, and I didn't ask about it either.

"She's going to be gone for a couple days."

He nodded his head mutely. "So what're you up to?"

"I'm having a snack." I licked at the pudding stuck on the peel, he seemed to grimace at that. "You?"

His shoulders slumped up and down as he shrugged them, he was rubbing his hands tiredly inside the pockets of his jeans. Whatever it was, it wasn't coming off easily. "I don't know, I was thinking about a few things. I needed to say that I'm sorry for what happened a couple days ago...but I couldn't really find the chance to...and I was also pissed off at you too...it's right too- when mom said that I was being unsocial."

"Mmmm." I mumbled, shoving in the chocolate treat into my mouth just so I didn't have to respond back to Matthew.

"So I invited over a few kids."

The pudding got caught in my throat in the process of going down. "_You_? _you_ did?" He was gawking at my response and I needed a cover-up for myself. "I mean, you did?cool, because you haven't had anyone over for a couple months?...yeah that's cool." I felt my face redden up a bit, a bitter taste winning over in my tongue.

"Right." Matthew sounded uncertain, he looked like he was blanking out for awhile. "And they said that they'd come over too, if you wanted me to confirm."

I quirked up my lip into a grin and tossed the empty container into the trashcan. It went in smoothly this time.

"So what're you guys going to do? I can move upstairs into mom's room for the night if you're planning on to-"

"Okay, technically they're all _your_ friends."

I must have looked confused, because he gave me a veiled smile and pressed his eyebrows together. "Arthur, Ivan, and Ian." I tried weighing the wisdom of getting into a fight over this with Matthew. But that's hardly useful when I get ticked off. So Matthew had invited _his_ friends because he had none of his own? I knew I was thinking like an asshole, but it just seemed weird that he hadn't asked me beforehand. There were plenty enough times when I asked him if he'd rather hand out with Arthur and I instead of choosing to go loner in school, and he'd definitely shaken his head no at the offers. And now...

Matthew is the one to defuse the situation before anything can escalate. "Because you said you didn't have anything to do over the weekend." He corrects himself, the arrow of guilt somehow points into my own direction. The situation looks like Matthew had invited a bunch of kids over for the sake of Alfred now.

"...that's cool too." I watched him rummage through the cupboards to pull out a pastel-blue bowl and a box of cheerios. Matthew shook the box up and down and poured himself a half-full bowl of cereal. What was even going on inside his head these days? I found myself unsettled by the way he acted these days, he acted like he wanted to hide something away from everyone. More like, he acted like a sexually frustrated teenager with massive mood swings, but that stage was long gone for the both of us.

"Al?" Matthew was looking at me, smiling crookedly.

I gawked at him for a moment with an open mouth, I must have stared him a little too intensely."You know what, I think I'm going to go and wash up, yeah?" I didn't want to hear what he was going to say, I just raced hurriedly- or stumbled up hurriedly up the staircases with red cheeks. When I peeked back for a second, a little wave of regret washed up over me, followed by the imaginary spiders crawling up my spine. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong in so many levels and tones.

He was watching me walk away without batting an eye.


	3. Chapter 3

By the time I was done with the shower, they were all already sitting around in the living room. A surge of relief flooded into me as I noticed Matthew sitting in between Ivan and Ian. They were talking about something, something apparently very interesting. Ivan burst out into a gentle chuckle, his shoulders lifting up and down as the conversation went on. I grabbed my towel and rubbed it clumsily around my wet hair before thumping back down the staircase.

"Hello." Ivan offered a smile as he looked up from where he was. Ian hardly spared me less than half a glance while Arthur ran his fingers through his unkempt blond hair as Matthew went on with whatever he was telling everyone. So he could be normal after all. Maybe it was just my imagination if I thought about it; maybe Matthew was just happening to be looking at my way while I was running up the staircase? It was a best thing to ignore that thought for now, so I just pushed it far back into my mind before waving my hands towards the group with a grin. "What's so interesting here?"

Matthew glanced up, his eyes softening at the notice of my presence. "About the time you pretended to be a comic book hero and fell down the fence and broke your arm." I could feel a nice amount of heat rise up to my cheeks as he explained that was a kind of thing to be kept personal instead being shared around the public. Ian snickered at my reaction and leaned back, Arthur whispering the word 'idiot' with a matching snicker. "That's fine; we've all done something stupid at one point of our lives." Ian said, receiving a murmur of agreement from Ivan.

"I guess." I shrugged, not wanting to get any further into the embarrassing memory topics. Matthew gave me a somewhat pointed look before catching onto my eye, and then looked away. He was on his feet when I sat down next to him, scratching the back of his neck. "I'll be back, I think I forgot to take care of something…" His easy dismissal bugged me. "What do you need to do?"

"Something…personal." Then I realized that his hands were still buried into his pockets. I'm sure that he saw me peering at him with my mouth open, because he hurried away from the living room. If Arthur hadn't waved and motioned for me to move over, I would've sat staring at the direction of Matthew. "Idiot, you're crushing my ankle-"

"Big deal." Ian sneered at him, making me let out a constrained noise of laughter.

Arthur glared at me for a quick second, than just grumbled out a few things before removing his ankle from underneath my legs. I tossed a cushion back up to the couch and patted around the couch for the remote control.

"So what's up with you guys?" Ivan asked.

"I don't know, I was begging my mom for a new laptop, I fried up the battery for the last one."

"That was your third one." Arthur snorted, Ian was taking the remote control out from my hand.

"Yeah I know, but it just so happens that they break all the time."

"Maybe you should ask Santa Claus for a new one." Ivan was sarcastically replying back to me. He would definitely earn a glare from me for that comment.

"I don't think Santa would have any room for your laptop in his bag anyways."

"How come?"

"Because it's going to be filled up with a car- my car."

Ian was flipping through the channel, his head resting on the back of the couch. "Yeah, our mom promised to get Arthur a car this year." Arthur huffed at that, his cheeks turning pinkish for a second, then to a proudly-grin. "I don't know if she's getting it around Christmas time though."

I gawked at that, because my mom never promised to get _me _a car. We were all in the third year of high school and it was only Arthur and me who didn't have a car yet. We ended up always hitching along on Ian or Ivan's car each year, asking them for a quick ride around somewhere or even sometimes on the way towards school in the morning.

"But I don't think she should get you a car, I think you should get a bike instead."

Arthur's face went deeper in color at the comment. "Maybe she should, so you can use my bike and I could drive _your _car instead."

"A bike isn't a bad gift actually." Ivan's eyes stared towards the television screen with a woman with bouncy blond curls resting on her shoulders.

"All of you should just get a bike so I can have all of your cars." I said, earning a smirk from both Ian and Ivan and a punch to the shoulder form Arthur with a 'As if, dumbhead.'

We were in the middle of talking about my birthday party when we were all but six years old. Arthur said that he remembered me smiling like a winner over the birthday cake on that day. But no one was allowed to light the candle, nor were they allowed to touch the knives. I guess that kind of frustrated me when I was little, especially since I was the birthday boy and all- that meant that I needed to have my own ways. After hours of throwing a tantrum, mom let me stick the candles into the cake but made me promise not to touch the lighters. In the end, we were all surrounded over the birthday cake with a mashed up center and candles that stuck out in crooked angles everywhere.

"As far as I remember, it was a pretty good cake despite its looks." Ian was saying, his hands working through

"Alfred, something's wrong." Matthew had gotten changed into a new pair of clothes by now. He was wearing a dark, crimson red hoodie with a large white print saying 'wake up' stamped across the front. The jeans were the same as it was before, the dark smears still going across his thighs.

"What's up?" I asked.

Matthew sounded somewhat upset. "The dog's run into the forest." He sniveled.

"You were gone for all this time just to let a dog run into the forest?"

"The dog?" Ivan cut into my sentence and repeated after Matthew with a concerned face. "That's no good; we better find it before it gets dark."

Arthur and Ian were barely even paying attention, they were busy switching through the television channel and arguing with each other about which show was better and what not. I sent them a little hesitant glare and shrugged my shoulders. "You heard him, the dog's gone lost." Arthur was the one to turn the television with a deep sigh first. His emerald green eyes narrowed for a second as he shifted off from the couch with a strained yawn.

* * *

The five of us stood around our driveway, some of us wearily glancing towards the setting sun once in a while. The sky was already dyed deep with the orange-purplish color. "We really need to find it soon." I heard Arthur mumble as he scratched the back of his neck sluggishly. Matthew shot him a sideway glance before nudging me on the side with an assuring smile.

"Alright…Alfred, me, and Ivan will go into the forest by foot and you two can walk around the town in case he's gone off somewhere else." Matthew surprisingly sounded pretty confident as he nodded his head towards Ian and Arthur. "I'm sure he's somewhere around, he's not the type to run off far away from home."

Ian was kicking the gravel up with his shoes as he nodded. _Lucky bastard,_ I thought. Truth to be told, taking a walk in the woods just before sundown wasn't an exciting idea for me. I guess the countless nights of horror movies had brought on a nice amount of fear into me, but it wasn't like I was going to back down and let everyone know about it. It wasn't long before the two of them walked off into their own directions and leaving us alone by ourselves.

"So," Ivan pulled his chest back and let out a huff of air. "how does this dog look like?"

"He's a greyhound, with black spots."

"How'd he manage to get out of the house?"

Matthew let out a sniffle and shook his head. "I'm not sure, I think one of us might have accidentally left the door unlatched."

"Good enough for an excuse." Ivan started walking first, followed by me and Matthew. Soon enough, we were all quickening up our paces, our shoes starting to crunch down on the dead, grassy field that led into the forest. "You're sure he ran this way?"

"Yeah, I was chasing him all the way down to here when I noticed that he was outside of the house, he's a fast runner."

Something was shaking in Matthew's voice, I guessed that I was the only one who noticed it because Ivan only nodded his head and walked ahead of us silently. We were still walking when we finally stepped off from the clumpy grassy landscape and onto the weedy and leave-covered forest grounds. It gave off the eerie feeling all the forests had when dark, a dilapidated desk was laying wearily on its side next to a pine tree. What the hell was a desk doing here in the first place? "We're here." I heard Ivan whisper, and I drew in my breath. "Nice, now lead the way, Mattie." We both turned towards Matthew.

Except that he wasn't there anymore.

* * *

** ヽ****(；▽；****)ノ ****phew, sorry if this one took a bit long! But woah, it looks like we're finally getting into the exciting part of the story!...now that Matthew went missing, it means that it's up to Alfred and Ivan to find him..huhu (*-`ω´- )/ Ian and Arthur won't come out too much on the next chapter though, but they'll each get their own chapters later on in the story!**


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